What I am reading, and what I am trying to persuade my 10 year old son to read.

Thursday, 15 March 2012

Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers

I loved this book. The main attraction for me was its setting - Venice. It is somewhere I have always wanted to visit, and Salley Vickers' descriptions have made me want to go there even more.
The story concerns Julia Garnet, a retired school teacher who is somewhat set in her ways. She has shared her home with her friend Harriet for many years, and when Harriet dies, Julia finds herself at a loss. She makes an unusually spontaneous decision to rent out her house and go and live in Venice for a few months.
The rest of the novel is about Venice and its effect on Julia. In learning about the city and uncovering the layers upon layers of stories and myth, she begins to learn about herself and her own life. In England she was a reserved woman who kept herself to herself, but in Venice she gets involved in other people's lives. This doesn't always bring her happiness, sometimes it brings her heartache, but it all helps to chip away at the wall she had built around herself.
Salley Vickers has put a reading list in the back of the book and I will certainly be making a note of some of the books for further reading about Venice.